Green Gambit: Jill Stein’s Mystifying Presidential Run
“Green Gambit — that’s the stark reality we face as Jill Stein, the physician-turned-politician, reenters the presidential fray, casting a shadow over the painful memories of 2016. This is my Two Minute Tirade. Let’s start the clock!
A licensed physician she may be, but let’s not confuse a doctor’s office with the Oval Office. Political acumen isn’t diagnosed and treated; it’s earned through the rigors of public service. Stein’s resume? Sparse. Her stint in elected office? Brief, local, hardly a stepping stone to the presidency.
But here’s where the scalpel cuts deep — in 2016, Stein’s candidacy left scars in the Democratic psyche, tracing the battleground outlines of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In these states, her votes exceeded the hair’s breadth margin between Clinton and Trump, handing him the keys to the White House. It’s a bitter pill that Democrats still struggle to swallow, framing Stein as a potential spoiler, a political butterfly effect that altered history’s course.
We cannot overlook the Senate intelligence report, a web of intrigue suggesting Stein’s campaign was a pawn in Russia’s grand game. That image of her at dinner with Putin, a digital trail from Moscow to her doorstep, raises questions about her wisdom in running once more. IRA Twitter and Facebook addendum from the Senate Intelligence Committee report:
The Senate Intel Report found that Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) conducted extensive voter suppression efforts in 2016 among left-leaning audiences to hurt Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Because their goal was to benefit Donald Trump, the Senate “found no evidence of a comparable voter suppression effort that targeted U.S. voters on the ideological right.”
The IRA’s pernicious messages, pretending to be from American black voters on Twitter and Facebook, read, ‘Don’t Vote for Hillary Clinton,’ ‘Don’t Vote At All,’ ‘Why Would We Be Voting, ‘ ‘Our Votes Don’t Matter, ‘ [and] ‘A Vote for Jill Stein is Not a Wasted Vote. As we face the threat of a government shutdown, the nation craves seasoned leadership, not prescriptions without diagnoses.
Stein’s bid comes at a time when experience should trump ambition, and yet, her resolve is unshaken, undeterred by the specter of 2016 and the threads of foreign intrigue that entangle her past campaign. We stand at the precipice of a new election cycle, Stein’s candidacy a siren call to some, a red flag to others.
Those swing states haven’t forgotten. The margins haven’t widened. The stakes haven’t lowered. So, the pressing question dangles before us: Does Stein’s presidential pursuit represent a principled stand, or does it risk a repeat of the Green Party’s controversial role in 2016’s electoral drama? We turn to you now.
With Stein’s track record in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, is her candidacy a move toward political diversity, or is it a specter of division for Democrats? Sound off below. In this high-stakes political chess game, is America ready to entertain another gambit?
Douglas Christian is a multimedia Capitol Hill reporter. He has covered the 2016 Democratic and Republican conventions as a photographer and has produced numerous audio and video reports for Talk Media News. He has written scores of articles and op-ed pieces for the Baltimore Post Examiner, touching on politics to the arts and to hi-tech.
Douglas has worked as a photographer for decades. He has produced a few books on Oriental rugs; one was on Armenian Oriental rugs and the other was published by Rizzoli and co-authored by his uncle entitled, ‘Oriental Rugs of the Silk Route’. Douglas attended the Putney School in Vermont, a tiny progressive school in Vermont, where he became enthralled with photography and rebuilt a 4×5 camera. Later during college, he attended the Ansel Adams Workshop at Yosemite, where he determined to pursue photography. He transferred to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and received a BFA from Tufts. He has photographed an array of people including politicos such as William F. Buckley, Jr., George McGovern, Edward Teller and Cesar Chavez. His photography URL is www.photographystudio.com. His twitter feed is @xiwix. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.